Toll-free calls, also known as Inward Wide Area Telephone Service (INWATS) calls, allow a long distance subscriber to reverse the charges by permitting originating parties to call the subscriber without accruing long distance charges. In the United States, toll-free service is currently available for intrastate and interstate calls. Over the last twenty years, the volume of toll-free calls has increased to the extent that its traffic has become a substantial percentage of all toll calls. Toll-free service is especially useful for entities such as reservation call centers, retail call centers, hospitals, emergency hotlines, professional services, retail dealers, radio/TV promotions, government call centers, and education call centers.
An entity will often have a single advertised toll-free telephone number that is applicable to multiple locations and multiple services. Having a single advertised number helps to eliminate the expenses which would otherwise be associated with advertising the different locations and services with a different phone number for each. Additionally, advertising a single toll-free number can make it easier for a caller to remember the entity's phone number and easier to access multiple services with one phone call. For example, this is especially true for a nationally franchised pizza delivery business having a large number of business establishments all providing common goods and services. This allows a customer to remember one toll-free number that can be called from any location in the United States and routed to a local business establishment to order a pizza for local delivery.
In general, toll-free service connects an originating number through a series of switches connected to a long-distance carrier's communication network. The network queries a database to validate the toll-free number and to select a directory number (DN) for the terminating location of the toll-free number. The terminating number is then communicated to the long-distance carrier's switch and the call is routed via direct access or via local switches serving the terminating number.
There are numerous methods for routing toll-free calls. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,191,8660 of Weber, discloses a routing method to access one of a number of reservation offices of a national airline using a common toll-free telephone number. According to Weber, a caller dials a toll-free number which together with the numbering plan area code (NPA, the first three digits of the caller's ten digit number) is used along with the toll-free number dialed by the caller to access a database to translate the toll-free number into a terminating number in the form of a Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS) number to which the call is routed. Since the translation compares the caller's NPA and the dialed toll-free number, callers from different NPAs may be routed to different reservation offices. Furthermore, the use of the translation permits out-of-hours traffic to be routed to a different set of reservation office than busy hour traffic.
Another routing example is U.S. Pat. No. 5,878,126 of Velamuri, et al., which discloses a method and system of routing an originating number to a particular subscriber location within a plurality of subscriber locations based on the geographic area from which the call originated. The method includes identifying the originating number with a specific location identifier indicating the location of the originating number, providing a range table of selected ranges of location identifiers and if the specific location identifier is within one of the selected ranges of the range table, the call is routed to the terminating number corresponding to the selected range containing the specific location identifier. If the specific location identifier is not located within one of the selected ranges, the call is routed to the terminating number corresponding to the specific location identifier located in an auxiliary database containing subscriber locations.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,757,267 of Riskin discloses a toll-free telephone system that routes an originating call to one of many nearby dealers (terminating numbers) based upon the coordinates of the originating number and upon the coordinates of the central office serving the dealer. A comparison is performed between the originating number and geographic locations of one to three selected nearby dealers. The system automatically dials the terminating number of the closest dealer thereby routing the originating number. If the terminating number is busy or does not answer, the system can attempt to call an alternate nearby dealer if one exists. The system further provides for billing each nearby dealer based on the number of incoming telephone calls and for reporting to each dealer the details of the incoming calls. This system can be uneconomical for local dealers and central offices.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,636 of Wegrzynowicz discloses a method for selecting a local dealer out of a large group of dealers for completion of a toll-free number. The caller is first connected to a toll switching system. That system sends a query to a first database using the toll-free number and the geographic information of the originating number. The first database responds with a routing number which is used to route a second query to one of a plurality of second databases. The second query uses the routing number and the geographical information of the originating number to access the second database and to obtain the terminating number of a local dealer. The terminating number is returned to the toll system for completing the call.
While each of these patents disclose methods for routing toll-free calls based on geographic information of the originating number and of the terminating number, none discloses a method for routing a local toll-free call via direct access by a local service provider. The term “local toll-free call” is used as a term of art herein to mean a toll-free call wherein the originating number and the terminating number (i.e., the toll-free number) are in the same Local Calling Area (LCA) or are in the same Local Access and Transport Area (LATA).
Today's toll-free subscribers are billed based on toll tariff rates and a variety of factors, such as, the number of subscriber lines, monthly hours of usage, time of day, and other factors. However, local toll-free calls are eligible for billing based on local tariff rates at substantially less cost to the subscriber. Despite this eligibility for discounted local toll-free billing, current industry practice is to bill toll-free subscribers either a fixed amount or a flat-rate per minute for each incoming call regardless of whether the toll-free call is considered local or toll. In addition, subscribers are not given the flexibility to allocate subscriber locations based on billing discounts. For example, a subscriber cannot assign geographic calling areas to a terminating number based on billing discounts.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide toll-free methods and systems to bill and route local toll-free calls via local service providers. Similarly, there is a need in the art to provide subscribers with the flexibility to route incoming local toll-free calls based on discounted local toll-free billing, demographic information of originating numbers, call volumes, times of day, and other factors.